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General 'H. Norman Schwarzkopf' KCB, also known as '"Stormin' Norman"' (b. August 22, 1934) is a retired United States Army General who, while he served as Commander-in-Chief (now known as "Combatant Commander") of U.S. Central Command, was commander of the Coalition Forces in the Gulf War of 1991.
Schwarzkopf was born in Trenton, New Jersey (but resided in Lawrenceville, New Jersey) to Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, then the Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police (the elder Schwarzkopf, who was not fond of his typical German first name, passed only the initial letter to his son, getting his "revenge" against both the U.S. Military Academy and the U.S. Army when he was called "Herbert" on all of his records). His connection with the Persian Gulf region began very early on. In 1946, when he was 12, he and the rest of his family joined their father, stationed in Tehran, Iran, where his father would go on to be instrumental in Operation Ajax. He attended the Community High School in Tehran, later the International School of Geneva, and attended and graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy. He is also a member of Mensa.

Contents

Formal education

Military career

Service in Vietnam

Rise to General

The Gulf War

Retirement

U.S. decorations and badges

Quotes

Trivia

Notes

References

Formal education

After attending Valley Forge Military Academy, Schwarzkopf, an army brat, attended the United States Military Academy, where he graduated 42nd in his class in 1956 with a Bachelor of Science Degree. While at West Point, he played on the football team, wrestled, sang, and conducted the chapel choir. He later attended the University of Southern California, where he earned a master's degree in mechanical engineering in 1964. His special field of study was guided missile engineering, a program that USC developed with the Army, which incorporated equally both aeronautical and mechanical engineering.

Military career

Upon graduating from West Point he was gazetted an infantry Second Lieutenant. He was a platoon leader and much later served as executive officer of the 2nd Airborne Battle Group at Fort Benning Georgia. Here he received advanced infantry and airborne training. Next came stints with the 101st Airborne Division in Kentucky and the 6th Infantry Regiment in West Germany. He was aide-de-camp to the Berlin Brigade in 1960 and 1961, a crucial time in the history of that divided city (the Berlin Wall was erected by East German and Soviet forces only a week after he left). By 1965 he was back at West Point, teaching engineering.

Service in Vietnam

More and more of his former classmates were heading to Vietnam as advisors to the South Vietnamese army and, in 1965, following Schwarzkopf's first year as a member of the faculty at West Point, he applied to join them. Schwarzkopf served as a task force advisor to a South Vietnamese Airborne Division, during that time, he was promoted from Captain to Major. When his tour of duty in Vietnam was over, he returned to serve out the remaining two years of his obligated teaching service at West Point.
In 1968, Major Schwarzkopf became a Lieutenant Colonel. In this same year, he married Brenda Holsinger.
One of the most remarkable incidents in a very distinguished career happened on this tour. When Schwarzkopf received word that men under his command had encountered a minefield on the notorious Batangan Peninsula, he rushed to the scene in his helicopter, as was his custom while a battalion commander, in order to make his helicopter available. He found several soldiers still trapped in the minefield. Schwarzkopf urged them to retrace their steps slowly. Still, one man tripped a mine and was severely injured but remained conscious. As the wounded man flailed in agony, the soldiers around him feared that he would set off another mine. Schwarzkopf, also injured by the explosion, crawled across the minefield to the wounded man and held him down (he was a wrestler at West Point, so he used a "pinning" technique in the process) so another could splint his shattered leg. One soldier stepped away to break a branch from a nearby tree to make the splint. In doing so, he too hit a mine, killing himself and the two men closest to him, and blowing an arm and a leg off Schwarzkopf's artillery liaison officer.
Eventually, Schwarzkopf led his surviving men to safety, by ordering the division engineers to mark the locations of the mines with shaving cream. (Some of the mines were of French manufacture and dated back to the Indochina conflict of the 1950s; others were brought by Japanese forces in World War II). Schwarzkopf was awarded his third Bronze Star for his bravery but, more importantly to Schwarzkopf, he firmly cemented his reputation as an officer who would risk his life for the soldiers under his command. Schwarzkopf was always known as a tough but caring officer. He told his men that they might not like some of his strict rules, but it was for their own good. He told them "When you get on that plane to go home, if the last thing you think about me is 'I hate that son of a bitch', then that is fine because you're going home alive." Lt. General Hal Moore later wrote that it was during his time in Vietnam that Schwarzkopf acquired what would later become his infamous temper, while arguing via radio for passing American Hueys to land and pick up his wounded men.^[1]

Rise to General

During the 70s, Schwarzkopf's star continued to rise. He attended the U.S. Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania (delayed for a year so that he could undergo back surgery for a congenital back condition that was aggravated by his combat services), served on the Army General Staff at The Pentagon, was deputy commander of U.S. Forces Alaska under Brigadier General Willard Latham, and served as a brigade commander at Fort Lewis, Washington.
After promotion to Brigadier General, he was assigned as Plans & Policy Officer (Assistant J3) at U.S. Pacific Command for two years. He then served as Assistant Division Commander (Support) of the 8th Mechanized Division and as Community Commander of Mainz, West Germany, during which the city was visited by Pope John Paul II, thus putting Schwarzkopf in charge of the U.S. security forces during the pontiff's visit.
He was promoted to Major General, and given command of the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division, at Fort Stewart, Georgia. A year into this assignment, a coup had taken place on the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada. With Cuban assistance, the Grenadian revolutionaries were building an airfield which U.S. intelligence suspected would be used to supply insurgents in Central America. It was also feared that Americans studying on the island might be taken hostage. Since an amphibious landing was called for, the entire operation was placed under the command of an admiral. Schwarzkopf was sent by the Army as an advisor to the Navy to make sure the Army units attached to the task force were used correctly. He quickly won the confidence of his superior and was named Deputy Commander of the Joint Task Force. While the Grenada operation proved more difficult than its planners had anticipated, the coup was quickly thwarted. Order was restored, elections were scheduled, and the American students returned home unharmed.
In 1984, Schwarzkopf returned to the Pentagon to serve as an assistant to Lieutenant General Carl Vuono (who was then Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations). In 1986, Schwarzkopf was promoted to Lieutenant General and was appointed as Commanding General of I Corps at Ft. Lewis. After only serving one year in command, he was called back to Washington to serve as Vuono's assistant (Vuono himself was promoted to General of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, only later to become Army Chief of Staff), this time in operations Deputy Chief position.

The Gulf War

In 1988, he was promoted to General and was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Central Command. U.S. Central Command, based at MacDill Air Force Base, near Tampa, Florida, responsible for operations in the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia (Operations for the Horn of Africa will fall under the new Africa Command by fall 2008) ^[2]. In his capacity as commander, Schwarzkopf prepared a detailed plan for the defense of the oil fields of the Persian Gulf against a hypothetical invasion by Iraq, among other plans. The Iraq plan served as the basis of the USCENTCOM wargame of 1990. Within months, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and Schwarzkopf's plan had an immediate practical application, which was as the basis for Operation Desert Storm. His operational plan (co-authored with his deputy commander, Lieutenant General Cal Waller and others on his staff) was the "left hook" strategy that went into Iraq behind the Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait, and widely credited with bringing the ground war to a close in just four days. He was personally very visible in the conduct of the war, giving frequent press conferences, and was dubbed "Stormin' Norman." After the war, Schwarzkopf was bestowed an honorary corporal in the French Foreign Legion, the first and only American to be so honored.

Retirement

Schwarzkopf retired from active service in August 1991, and shortly thereafter wrote an autobiography, ''It Doesn't Take a Hero'', published in 1992. There was some speculation in the aftermath of the Gulf War that he might run for political office, but he did not do so. In retirement, Schwarzkopf has served as a military analyst, most recently for Operation Iraqi Freedom, along with promoting prostate cancer awareness, a disease with which he was diagnosed in 1993, and for which he was successfully treated. He is an honorary board member of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. He currently lives in Florida.

U.S. decorations and badges

★ Distinguished Service Medal (Army) (with 2 Oak Leaf Clusters)

★ Silver Star (with 2 Oak Leaf Clusters)

★ Defense Superior Service Medal

★ Legion of Merit

★ Distinguished Flying Cross

★ Bronze Star with "V" Device (with 2 Oak Leaf Clusters)

★ Purple Heart (with Oak Leaf Cluster)

★ Meritorious Service Medal (with 2 Oak Leaf Clusters)

★ Air Medals

★ Army Commendation Medal with "V" Device (with 3 Oak Leaf Clusters)

★ Combat Infantryman Badge

★ Master Parachutist Badge

★ Army Staff Identification Badge

★ Joint Chiefs of Staff Identification Badge

★ Office of the Secretary of Defense Identification Badge
'Other awards'

★ Presidential Medal of Freedom

★ Knight Commander in the Military Division of Most Honourable Order of the Bath (honorary).

★ The United States Republican Senatorial Medal of Freedom

★ Congressional Gold Medal

★ Legion of Honor (France)

Quotes

★ "True courage is being afraid, and going ahead and doing your job."

★ "When placed in command -- take charge."

★ "The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it."

★ "Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy."

★ "Any soldier worth his salt should be anti-war. And yet there are things still worth fighting for."

Trivia

A widely propagated urban myth is that he was a nephew of the great soprano Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, which was published in several of her obituaries. However, the parents of Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr. were Julius George Schwarzkopf and Agnes Sarah Schmidt whereas Elisabeth's were Friedrich Schwarzkopf and Elisabeth Fröhling. Also, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was an only child.
In The Office, Michael Scott is in the offices of Dunder Mifflin and states that being at the headquarters is like Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf, we won't have to deal with those Iraqis anymore.
In King Of The Hill, a Fox TV series, Bill Dauterive, a supporting character of the show, visits a doctors office with the name Norman Schwarzkopf.
Beck's song "Hollywood Freaks" from the Midnite Vultures album references Norman Schwarzkopf in the following enigmatic couplet: "Norman Schwarzkopf, something tells me you want to go home. Champagne, bibles, custom clothes you own." Mr. Schwarzkopf has never released a statement on his opinion of the lyric.

Notes

1. Moore p. 17
2. http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2007&m=February&x=20070206170933MVyelwarC0.2182581

References

★ Moore, Harold G. ''We were soldiers once ...and young'', 2002 ISBN 0-552-15026-6

★ Schwarzkopf, N. ''It Doesn't Take a Hero'', 1993 ISBN 0-553-56338-6